The word "conservative" as used in America today has been almost emptied of meaning. It has nothing to do with Burke or Bonald or Bagehot, nothing to do with Pieper or Polanyi or Popper. It has, instead, everything to do with "low taxes," with the defense of privilege, with the growth of the GDP as the measure of all things, with free-market fundamentalism, with a race to the goddam bottom, with the most st short-sighted, most disruptive, and, for the preservation and transmission of culture, most dangerous forms of economic behavior. That's what these "conservatives" are all about, along with their well-heeled book deals, lecture tours, think-tank sinecures, self-promoting websites, and all the rest.

"Conservatives" or rather "conversatism" in America now means, in foreign policy, meddling messianism and the crazed following of Bush, with lemming loyalty, right off the cliff, the one labelled "Iraq."